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Wow. Crikey. Its been a while aint it. July was the last post. A few things have been done since then so I better get typing. First off. Come February we will have owned the land for two years and it will be 14 months since we moved out to it. Its settled in nicely and we are getting a good feel for the seasons and all the little things that happen out here when they change. Starting to get to know the locals quite well and have had lots of work coming into the workshop from just word of mouth which is awesome. Hannah is working a summer season job down at the beach front and when thats over we will be doing a flyer drop around the valley and surrounding areas to put out to people that they can get many sorts of engineering/repairs/bike repairs/advice on cats/great coffee from us* *my coffee aint that great.. In the start of spring I spent a morning going about the land taking photos. I tried to compose them as close as I could to the original photos we took as we cleared the land. Some are ever so slightly off. This was because things have changed so much that even I struggled to work out where the original photos were taken! I'm pretty happy with the resulting before and after collection so I'll put them right here. I have tried to list them from the drive way entrance and then heading down the drive to the north end of the property. The driveway entrance.. heading up the drive.. The highest point of the driveway.. I like this one.. looking down the driveway. Such a difference. Next up- one of the 5 old caravans that got taken away. This one was surrounded by lots of junk/scrap steel etc. Now just trees and some sweet old gates we saved. The mountain bike track I started heads in just around there. These next ones are looking out from about where the cabin veranda is.. Looking back towards where the cabin is now. Thats my brother duncan trying to locate where the Gravely mowers might be. We found them a few months later. and now.. Hannah wondering WTF... This next one is from the first night we stayed over to check the land out. We had pushed the driveway gorse down by throwing the van into 4wd and just driving over the top. Here down at the north end I was just laying back in the grass chilling and imagining what the area could be like. There is now a bit more parking area.. The following morning of the first night Hannah chilling in the morning sun with a coffee. We didnt really know what this area was going to be like in two years time.. This is it. you can see we kept the little Kanuka to the left. Its thriving now! The main yard was not much of a yard back then.. This is better !... Our first morning.. two years later.. I'm really glad I took so many photos before we cleared it all. Its great to look back at. Moving on to recent times. Not long before xmas this happened.. https://youtu.be/uaAHS96LGP4 We had been wanting rid of that 70 plus year old bugger for ages and its so good to see it gone. Shane (sideways sickness) and Greg (64Valiant) came round and got to see some of it heading to earth. Then we had a nice BBQ. Big thanks goes out to Shep for chopping it down. No way would I be doing that job. For starters I dont have chainsaw with a metre long bar! Nor the skill or experience. It was great fun just helping out and watching. We have many more big pine trees to come down over the next couple of years but this one was the one I wanted gone now. The view afterwards is heaps better!!!. Plus we now have a sweet as 8 metre high trunk to build a cool viewing platform on one day Before.. After.. Then for the end of the year we thought we had better crack on and finish the bathroom before my brother came over to stay. We needed the shower going for him so we got stuck in and finished it just before xmas eve. It still has some little finshing touches like light switches, extra lights, better prettier shower head, hand rail up the steps etc but its pretty much done. It works really well however I reckon we'll get a new califont for winter as the old Palomar is a bit small on heating capacity. We'll see. The compost toilet is working really well and still doesn't smell. Ive not yet even wired in the fan. Happy with that. Its taking about 3-4 months to fill a bin. Will put in a third bin soon and then start a secondary outside composting area away up under the eucalyptes just to be safe. The bathroom lights and shower pump are running off the cabin solar panel setup too and we have run wires to add a couple of outside lights to light up the pathway from the cabin to the bathroom. I just have to make some lights yet. Anyway.. some photos of the new bathroom ... We moved all the various piles of gorse and Kanuka into one place to chop too. Here you can get an idea of the amount of Gorse we cleared.. We have also started a vege garden and although a bit late its going well. Its certainly not a massive affair like our neighbours but we'll learn and it'll get bigger/better. The strawberries all going mental and its great to have 4 or 5 fresh strawberries on the cereal in the morning. Our fruit orchard trees are growing well and seem pretty happy. We'll plant heaps more this winter. The olive tree seems happy as so we'll plant more of them along the driveway. Finally Hannah spotted an old picnic table offered for free down at someones holiday home so we grabbed that. I told the owner we had been after one for ages so he was stoked it was going to be used. It looks the part and is an ideal little spot to chill. Thats it for now. I hope you enjoyed it. Im pretty damn happy with it all and now the rush is sort of over (for a bit) we have both finally been enjoying more of a summer recently of just swimming and cycling. Next big plan is the mezzanine floor in the workshop but that will be a winter thing. Then more cabins! Oh and bike tracks. Oh and spa pool. Damn...

More painting……. And a stack of new parts……. Why does assembly always feel like Christmas…. Some new brake lines…….. And it’s done……

Right so I thought I would chuck this up here in case there are other weirdos out there like me who like these piles of crap. It's a 1987 TM Magna Elite Auto so top of the range for its day with mostly all electrics, four wheel discs, digital dash, air con etc Found it on Gumtree after the owner for the last 20 years went into a rest home and her neighbour was selling it off on her behalf. He went through the trouble of organising a roadworthy certificate (like a WOF, you need before you can transfer ownership) of which it passed, but then it had to remind us that it is a Mitsubishi and then proceeded to lose forward drive from the transmission. I happened to know where another identical model was with a good trans but stuffed engine and bought them both for cheap. I guess this is a thread mostly to document what is bound to go wrong with it and what I've ended up fixing.. starting with the transmission... Old (previously rebuilt) trans out, 120,000kms donor trans lurking behind it mounted back together and finally legal with club reg Stay tuned for the next failure...

I picked this up off a mate who had great plans for it but never got around to doing much with it. Here is how it looked when I picked it up. Sorry for the potato photos, my phone camera sucks.Bit rougher in person then in the photos. I started by stripping the tank and replacing the bars with some clip ons. Managed to sort the wiring on it to get spark. Managed to get it to fire, but pretty sure that crap from the rusty fuel tank has blocked carb jets, so they will be coming off for a strip down shortly. Painted the wheels. Still haven't quite decided what I will do with it. I'm very happy with how the KZ 440 has turned out, but not keen to copy the same style for seat. Will probably go for either a brat style or cafe racer seat.

i dunno if I've mentioned it before but all the brightwork on this car has been pre-fucked by whoever painted it red last time around. parts that are usually chrome, like the C pillar trim, the taillight/headlight surrounds and bumpers had been sanded and fucked in the past in order to paint them red. so I've had to bead blast them and paint them again. hence the gunmetal grey colour. so with that in mind here are the bumpers with their first coat of primer on them. tonight i also prepped and primed the front infill panels and the rear number plate mount. i ordered another liter of the grey today and i should get that tomorrow then i can finish paint a few more parts. 2016-01-18_08-26-10 by sheepers, on Flickr 2016-01-18_08-26-23 by sheepers, on Flickr

I rate this a solid 8 out of 10 and would get a 9 out of 10 if you did something about straightening up the camber on the front wheels. It makes it look a lot weird.

spent the whole day reading this thread from start to finish in between pretending to work.. living the dream man, so inspiring

the other day i painted the C pillar trims and the panel that goes between the tail lights. I'm sold on this colour so tomorrow ill get a liter of it mixed and that should be more than enough to paint the few remaining bits. didn't get much done today. i did a few little things yesterday like paint all the headlight buckets and the grill support brackets for the front. i put it together today and stuck the grill and bumper fill panels on to trial fit them and see how they look. its pretty good, ill chuck the bumper on tomorrow and just check how well it all fits together but so far so good. 2016-01-17_04-21-47 by sheepers, on Flickr 2016-01-17_04-21-59 by sheepers, on Flickr

Took a few photos today. Good turn out and cool to meet some OS peepz

Fixed to match my day, Mid dayish.. 2 No.1 beers, Dozen oysters FTW.

1980s Jap cars shouldn't look clean. That was the era of stick-on stripes and scoops and side skirts and spoilers and louvres and monsoon shields and mudflaps and driving lights and side mouldings and writing saying 'TURBO'.

Sure is the flashiest long drop I've ever seen.

He didn't come home swearing and giving me the evils, so good I guess!

Cheers fellas! Yeah I'm bloody glad I took heaps of photos of what at the time was just.. Gorse.. Yeah Will- there are a few housetrucks out for rent locally and the websites show them often booked out at silly prices. We do have plans to rent out what ever we build up on the ridge because it is just so sweet up there. So what ever we build is going to have to be something pretty special. We have only just spotted another area at the south end up on another ridge that gets great light and has a awesome view plus looks down on a gully of massive tree ferns. Never thought to look up there. Will be a mission to build there but could always try to build a real deal pioneer chainsaw milled hut up there. Got to make a track first. Good thing is there would be a completely separate parking area in the gully so it could be rented and have complete separation from us. Oh man..so many ideas and things to build.

As with any project that involves old cars you spend a disproportionate amount of your time dealing with rust! I’d try been meaning to give electrolysis a go for quite a while and thought now would be as good a time as any. All you need is some sort of tank, an old school battery charger, some washing soda and water…… Connect the -ve to the rusty car part and the +ve to a few bits of scrap steel and throw the lot into water with a little washing soda added, turn on the power and watch the fascinating yet friendly little bubbles forming ……… And more friendly bubbles…………… After a period of time you’ll discover that despite your initial burst of enthusiasm watching friendly bubbles forming becomes very, very, very boring and you’ll feel a strong urge to drink heavily! The following morning you end up with a fuzzy head and rust soup………. An interesting by-product of the exercise is that you will also end up with the rust gone from your car part. Before and after shot….. A bit of paint and the results speak for themselves… Can’t help but wonder if you could de-rust a whole car body in the neighbour’s swimming pool with an arc welder, (while he was away on holiday of course!).

stolen from facebook

Speaking of the digital dash - I noticed after a couple days of getting it that the volt and oil pressure indicators were very faint compared to the rest. The parts car came with its original digital dash along with one other spare. As the parts car had nearly half the kms as mine I wanted to see how close the other spare dash was to my milage - it was sitting at 219,000kms which was great... if only the odometer and the clock were the same brightness as the rest of the cluster.. So in went the 124,000kms cluster which everything is all working fine. I just have to sort out bringing the kms back up to around 236,000kms or repair the original cluster. I has all of the warning lights I swapped in the bread bin pocket of the TN/TP Magna so now I have some space to shove a phone or something. Still has original radio/cassette with equaliser

flip those are some nice extractors!

As per dream shed thread. This isn't really my "dream" shed but it's close enough for a rough cunt. So like, way back when I was 21 I bought 6.5 acres with the intention of building a house one day. I was a builder at the time which was perfect as there was no way I'd be able to afford to pay someone to do it. Fast forward 6 years, now single again with plenty of time on my hands and living with the olds while I sort my shit out. I decided it was time to do something with the section, but building a house was too difficult on a single wage, so I decided to do a workshop and live in it. Months and months went by. I drew plans, got quotes, talked to the bank, got a 2nd mortgage etc. Seemed like an eternity to get everything sorted. Mid December, just before I went on holiday before Christmas. I mowed the lawns and sprayed the drive.

Thought about having a chat to Ewan in Japan? He might be able to source the screen and other assorted treasure?

I want to come visit

This is now running and has brakes, Just took it for a drive and it broke the chain idler which which destroyed the chain. the neighbours enjoyed watching me push it home as they had come out to see what was going on because it was so loud driving down the street. any way some updates I have more but will update after the fact Also its got enough power to get up to the speed limit which is pretty sweet for the 250. Rear light off a push bike that looks pretty sweet i real life, potato photo makes it look lame My master cylinder off a suzuki car and amp to run some house speakers Start of adapting a car disk to a 40mm axle making cortinas look big since ages ago Look at that rear fitment

Where in Auckland are they .It's a big place .

Check out the cutie in the background:

Got to the show early Saturday, said hello to mr midnight uphols,(bug looked sick!) had a nice chat to mr azzurros, cheers bro, then I went and looked at some stuff before it got to hot, which was about 20 minutes later! pics to follow?

Wow! Your bathroom floor matches perfectly with my bus's bathroom wall! Awesome stuff guys. I've seen most of those pics and seen it all in real time too but it still amazes me to see the amount of work you two have done.

Have you taken the tops of those SU carbs yet? the slides get carbon on them, a very small amount causes them to run like shit, when you are starting in the morning and it dose a chuff back through the intake it makes the slides dirty. I have had six 2500 Triumphs, I had major problems with one car witch turned out to be a worn bush in the dizzy, the fuel level in the glass fuel pump will change often, when you stop on a hot day they back feed into the tank and it will empty.

I see there's someone on Airbnb charging $200/night to stay in a house truck (and it's popular!). Maybe you need to build some more!

All g wit me.

Oh and don't do jumps in them they tear the struts clean out of the body and you bounce down the road getting sea sick FYI

Nice work i reckon the 5/4s really suit it and will look even better when you slam it haha. Reminds me of the old race ae82's that ran 5/4s

Hah. the bread bin rules.

363 days till kumeu lads.

holey fuck! massive effort by everyone involved this year!! huge amount of club cars and people lots of new faces from the club too. was great to have a banner this year to be somewhat of an official club. valiant effort everyone. i can def wait another year till the next one, already have a kumeu cruiser project in mind for the next one. best car on day: rustisizes model T best kumeu crusing car: threeonthetrees morris minor car and trailer (amount of people on and still driving around still to be confirmed) most popular slammed beetle: joels blue beetle

Its been nearly 6 months and all I have done in this is burn oil, gas and get a wof. Who is good with drum brakes? This has shitloads of pedal travel before some slowing happens. I adjusted them a while ago but can't have a look at them myself at the moment as I have injured wrists. (Yes both of them) Solo sex injury gone very wrong. Edit for more info This has drums all round, Looks like the master cylinder has been replaced at some point. Ultimately I'll be getting drop spindles or at the very least disc spindles for this

Sanded: Primered:

Don't listen to him Mase. All the cool rx2's have simmons. Such an under rated wheel.

I've said this before, but keep doing exactly what you're doing! Watching low HP cars battle against the big boys is awesome. One day you'll have 200hp and be able to stick it with the 1000hp boys in D1. You shall be known as Keiranhiro Ueo.

They got the V6 in the next shape Magna. The NZ V3000 was basically a clone of the lesser known Galant Duke V3000 which was sold in very few numbers in Japan due to its displacement and extra tax. Everything came in a complete knock down kit and only stuff like the interior, wiring looms and glass was manufactured in NZ, while in Aus the Magna has PBR brakes, Aussie made Bosch alternator, Aussie made engine and driveshafts etc. Club reg allows you to drive it for 45 or 90 days of the year for a reduced price. You just fill in the dates you drive it in a log book and once you run out of your allocated entries that's it for the year. Costs $70/140 as opposed to $770+ for a years rego otherwise. Obviously is better suited to project cars and not daily drivers. The car must be 25+ years old, modifications approved and you have to be a financial member of a club.

That handbrake adjustment

At work . That's not even the track, that's the testing ring. Down the hill, there is 2.3km of paved private glory. I'm not going to lie, I've managed to score about the best job, in the world, ever. Yesterday I fixed a Ferrari 458 Challenge racecar (minor electrical fault). Today I spent the day fitting aftermarket race suspension to a Lotus 340R. It's the bizzaro world, and I'm going to ride it out for all I can.

Hiya want to borrow my Morris 1300 and roll up in style?

Finished rear fitment with wheels mounted to axle, I have to raise the front slightly beacuse the tyre rubs on the top in the inner guard with people in it Mounted one broken headlight and put the switch on the bonnet coz I can do what ever I want and with no window and a tiny car its easily within reach when seated. this photo makes the rear look like it has lame camber but its actully stright up and down Only 11 days and heaps of work until i need this driveable, so there probley wont be any posting till after its done.

Went for my first hillclimb today, was awesome fun. Had never been out this way or on this road but was great. A few close moments but came away unscathed. https://youtu.be/wolsan9NpN4

Sorry if I’m straying slightly off topic but one of my passions is saving old tools. My 1930’s record No.4 vice (it was my granddad's) was not handling the latest project well, I needed something bigger. Scored a very rusty but gorgeous 60 plus? Year old 6” American Wilton for $55. You need two hands and a strong back to lift this old beauty, it’s got almost as much cast iron in it as Rigamortice's short-block! 24 hours in the Phosphoric pickle bath…… Some etch primer…….. Two coats of epoxy enamel, some Moly grease and a little TLC……… Not only have I the vice from hell this piece of history has gone from the scrap pile to having a life expectancy that will outlive most of us reading this thread.

Havent fixed any oil leaks yet. Ran the truck up on the dyno to sort the miss fire etc out. Drives beautifully now (no hesistation/backfiring etc) Made A whopping 140 wild american horsies @3600 at the back wheels with 219ftlbs of torque.

my thoughts are.. just fit the DOHC 4G63 and be done with it.

Awww shucks Cam. You make me blush. As always the offer of cups of tea etc are always there. When its a bit more sorted you must come over and stay a weekend. I shall ply you with beer in return for blackberry and gorse removal. Yeah we are stoked with how quickly its clearing. When we very first looked at the land around end of last winter/spring it was soooo overgrown and really put us off. Then we found the track up to the ridge and saw the view up there. That sold it to us. Plus we got it at an awesome price and the seller is really cool. When we get the bottom area sorted and get a big shed up we can move out. Hopefully before the start of summer. Once we are out there we both really want to build another larger cabin or housetruck for up on the ridge. Its so awesome up there. Great all day sun, amazing views, you cant see any houses or evidence of humans, heaps of birdsong. Its just so lush up there and only about a 10 minute walk up to there. Will make an awesome mtb/walking track through the bush/tree ferns/kanuka groves with a sweet enough gradient that a granny could ride her bike up there. A view from the ridge...